'Ho!' said Bencolin, appreciatively. 'Well done, Pregel! I never saw the lady, to my knowledge. By all means let's look at her.' His voice dropped its bantering. 'Messieurs, do you realize that mis is probably the woman the policeman saw waiting at the door of the museum after it had closed - the mysterious blonde in the brown hat? Strike a light.'
The flame of the large match spurted up, cupped in Pregel's hands. Then he held it carefully before a large coloured picture inscribed: 'Estelle, Grande Chanteuse Americaine du Moulin Rouge.' Blue eyes, set wide apart, looked at us with a sideways quirk which was half allure and half appraisal. The full pink lips were slightly open, the head thrown a little back, with the suggestion of a smile. Her nose was straight, and her chin firm. The hair, secured with a network of pearls, was not so much yellow as that rich brown which gives off flashes of gold under lights. We were silent, looking at it in the match-flame which Pregel was shielding against the wind. Then the match went out.
'Wait a minute!' Chaumont cried, suddenly. 'Strike a light again! I want to look....’
His voice was bewildered. He muttered: 'It can't be — ' and checked himself as Pregel struck another match. A silence. Then Chaumont expelled his breath hard. He said, wryly:
'Monsieur, I seem fated to give you identifications tonight. Do you remember my mentioning that Odette formerly had two great friends who were called the Inseparables? Claudine Martel, and Gina Prevost - who wanted to go on the stage and her family wouldn't permit it? Well, I can't believe it, and yet it's an extraordinary resemblance. I am almost willing to swear that tins "Estelle" is Gina Prevost. Good God! Singing in the Moulin Rouge! She must be...'
We were in darkness again. After a pause Pregel spoke softly:
'Monsieur is quite right. I asked the concierge. Mademoiselle Estelle, as I told you, is supposed to be American, but, under threat, I got the truth from the concierge. She is French, and her name is Prevost.' He drew a deep breath as though to say: 'Another illusion gone!' Afterwards he said: 'Shall I be required further to-night, Monsieur Bencolin ?'
'No,' said Bencolin. ‘I think, messieurs, we have had about enough of this for one night. You had better go home. I want to think.'
He turned, his hands jammed into his pockets, and began to walk slowly in the direction of the Champs Elysees. I saw his tall figure moving through patches of shadow and starlight, chin sunk on his breast, as he would walk until dawn. Distantly, the bell at the Invalides tolled three.
The Second Mask
Grey clouds hung over Paris that next morning. It was one of those autumn days when the wind has an ugly whine, when the sun lies behind those dull clouds and tips them with a cold gleam like steel. Houses look old and sinister, and every span of the Eiffel Tower stands out chill against die sky. When I breakfasted at ten o'clock, my apartment was dismal despite the bright fire in the drawing-room. I could see its reflection on the walls, rising and shrinking, to remind me of Etienne Galant and the white cat. ...
Bencolin had phoned earlier. I was to meet him at the Invalides - a large order, but I knew exactly where I should find him. He was in the habit of haunting the battle-chapel which is directly behind Bonaparte's tomb. I do not know what fascination this place exercised over him, for he took not the slightest interest in any of the great churches; but in this dusky stone chapel, where the old war-flags hang from the rafters, I have known him to sit for hours absorbed, leaning on his cane, staring down at the dim pipes of the organ.
When I drove to the Invalides I was still thinking of Galant. The man obsessed me. While I had had no further opportunity to question Bencolin about him, it occurred to mc at last why his name had been vaguely familiar. A chair in English literature at Oxford, yes. And his book on the Victorian novelists had won the Goncourt prize only a few years ago. No Frenchman, with the possible exception of M. Maurois, had so thoroughly understood the Anglo-Saxon mind. As I remembered the book, it had not been - as so often with Gallic writers - cheaply satirical. Hunting-field, punch-bowl, tall hat, overstuffed parlours, all this robust world of ale and oysters and parasols, was set forth with a sympathetic pleasure which, as I recalled Galant, seemed amazing. And in his chapters on Dickens he had caught an elusive and baffling thread. He had caught the morbidness, the terror, which underlay the mind of Dickens and was the soul of his most vivid effects. More and more the figure of Galant grew distorted, as in crooked mirrors; I saw him sitting in his cold house, with his harp and his white cat, and the nose which seemed to move of its own volition, like a live thing. He smiled.
A wet wind swept across that vast dry-brown open space which marches up to the Invalides, and the gilded eagles on the Pont Alexandre looked murky. I went past the sentinels at the iron gates, up the slope to the great dark building, and into a courtyard that is always murmurous with echoes. A few people moved in the cloisters where the embalmed guns lie; my own footsteps were loud on the stones, and the whole place smelled of decayed uniforms. Here above all you felt the shadow of the Emperor's gilded dome. At the door of the chapel I paused. Inside it was dusky, except for a few pin-point candles burning before shrines; and the organ sent a thin wave of sound rolling under the arches, rising in ghostly triumph round a dead man's battle-flags. .. .
Bencolin was there. He stepped out to join me, his jaunty appearance momentarily neglected, for he wore an old tweed topcoat and a disreputable hat. We walked down the cloister slowly. At last he made an irritable gesture.
'Death’ he said. 'This atmosphere - it's like the case. I have never known an investigation recently in which it seemed so to penetrate everything I touch. I have seen horrifying things, yes, and black fear, but this terrible sombre-ness is worse. It's so meaningless. Ordinary young girls, such as you might meet at any tea, without enemies or grand passions or nightmares; sensible, steady-going, not even especially beautiful. And they die. That's why I think there's a worse horror than any other at the end of it ... ' He broke off. 'Jeff, Galant's alibi checks at every point.'
'You've tested it out?'
'Naturally. It's just as he says; my best agent, Francoise Dillsart - you remember him in the Saligny case? - has all the testimony. The car-starter at the Moulin Rouge summoned the limousine at eleven-thirty precisely. He remembers, because Galant looked at his watch before getting in, and then towards the illuminated clock across the street; the car-starter automatically followed his glance.'
'Doesn't that in itself seem suspicious?'
'Not at all. Had he been trying to form an alibi, he would definitely have called the starter's attention to it; he could hardly have risked the psychological chance that the man would notice —'
'Still,' I said, 'a subtle man - -'
Bencolin twirled his stick, staring down the dim cloister. 'Turn right, Jeff. We'll go out on the other side; Madame Duchene, Odette's mother, fives on the Boulevard des Invalides. ... H'm. Subtle or not, there's the clock. The traffic in Montmartre is always congested at that hour. It would easily have taken him between ten and fifteen minutes -even longer than he said - to get from the Moulin Rouge to the night club. Under those circumstances it doesn't seem humanly possible for him to have committed the murder. And yet I am willing to swear he came into "The Grey Goose" for the definite purpose of establishing an alibi! Unless —’
He stopped short. Then he smote his fist into his palm. 'What a dunce! Tiens! what a dunce, Jeff! That's it, of course.'